


Cause and Effect

by mildlySerendipitous (Irrisia)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: AU, Bards, Gen, Godstuck, Humour, generic fantasy setting, homesmut fills, trolls as gods
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-30
Updated: 2013-07-30
Packaged: 2017-12-21 22:32:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/905723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Irrisia/pseuds/mildlySerendipitous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karkat sneaks out of the heavens to go to the inn, and hears a tale he wasn't expecting to hear.</p><p>He takes a certain amount of umbrage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cause and Effect

The bard came to the end of the song. It had been a very nice song, once. The bard Gwefir gone to a lot of effort to find exactly the right rhymes, to fit it all to an upbeat but not overly so tune, to make the phrasing poetic yet not flowery.

Unfortunately, some years had passed since then, and although he couldn't put an exact number on it, it was still coming up somewhat clearly "far too many". It was a bit of a shame, really; he'd quite liked that song, even if it was a little inaccurate.

Someone had, along the way, decided that the accurate phrase "a cycle" needed to be replaced with "aeons". Someone else had inserted an unnecessary chorus about valour and glory and hey-nonny-nonny-hey, whatever that meant. The tune had acquired a number of frills and trills, as each successive musician decided that that bit of the song there didn't quite fit and needed livening up. Three verses about hardship and travail (rhymed with with whale, for no good reason) had been inserted, as had a whole cast of faceless soldiers.

In short the song had not only been butchered, but preserved, stuffed, and then clinically dissected.

Karkat sighed, vaguely considered just going home and sleeping it off, but then the applause started and "going home" rather stopped being an option. He stood, dramatically pushing his chair over (he cheated a little with that one, mostly to make sure his cape didn't get tangled in the chair legs again), and threw his mug at the stage. It sailed just past the bard's ear, bounced off the wall, landed on the floor and carefully rolled to sit at the bard's feet. Karkat was rather proud of that one. He'd been practising it.

In the resulting silence, as the rest of the inn stared at him, he cleared his throat a little self-consciously. Then he said "fuck you" to self-consciousness, and opened his mouth. "LOOK, YOU BULGESNIFFING, TAINTLICKING MORONS, IF YOU'RE GOING TO TELL YOURSELF RIDICULOUS TALES OF THE TIME THE MIGHTY KARKAT WENT FORTH TO DO BATTLE, AT LEAST MAKE SURE THAT YOU DON'T ACCIDENTALLY STRANGLE YOURSELF WITH YOUR HOODS OUT OF SHEER STUPIDITY. BECAUSE PAN-DAMAGE DUE TO AIR DEPRIVATION IS THE ONLY REASON I CAN COME UP WITH FOR WHY YOU'D ACTIVELY ENJOY THAT BILGE."

A few brave souls booed. Karkat was positively appalled. Did nobody have any manners any more? When a grey-skinned stranger turned up, it used to be that everyone would shut up and genuflect. Nowadays, he was lucky if they stopped yapping for five seconds.

The bard, having taken the temperature of the room and finding it still lukewarm, decided that he should have a say in the matter. "So then, traveller, you'd be an expert on the gods then, would you?" The sarcasm leached from his tone into the room, making a mess of the atmosphere.

"DAMN FUCKING RIGHT I WOULD," said Karkat, without missing a beat. "LOOK, OKAY, IT WASN'T A BATTLE. IT WAS JUST ERIDAN BEING OBTUSE AGAIN. KARKAT WENT OVER, YELLED AT HIM AGAIN, AND HE PROMISED TO NEVER DO IT AGAIN. THERE WERE NO SICKLES INVOLVED, AND THE ONLY QUEST WAS "FIND ERIDAN'S LATEST CAVE, OH WAIT HE NEVER LEFT THE OLD ONE, WELL THAT WAS EASY TO FIND"."

"Oh?" said the bard. "So you're accusing my master of lying, when he said this was a true story? And his master, and his master, and all the way back to the great Gwefir?" The bard was proud of his bardic heritage. It was a bit of a pity, thought Karkat, that that heritage seemed to consist of getting things really fucking wrong.

"NO, I JUST THOUGHT I'D SEE IF YOU WERE PAYING ATTENTION," he said out loud, rolling his eyes. The audience gasped. It just wasn't done, accusing a bard of lying. Everyone knew they exaggerated, but to outright say that their stock-in-trade was falsehood was a little gauche. Also a little dangerous, if you picked the wrong Bard.

"Well then," said the bard, "I assume you have proof?"

"PROOF?" Karkat _thought_ , and suddenly he was clothed in his armour, his sickles at his side, the red aura behind his head glowing brightly. "IS THIS ENOUGH PROOF TO STICK UP YOUR NOOK AND CHOKE ON IT?"

\--

"And so the mighty Lord Knight, having spent 3 nights in discourse with the bard, proclaimed himself the winner, and vanished once more to the heavens, there to watch over us", said the storyteller.

He was a little confused to be greeted by open snickering, from the table right in front of him, but he was a master at ignoring these things, and departed with his dignity firmly in place.

The people snickering watched him walk away, and burst into outright laughter.

"W41T UNT1L 1 T3LL H1M ABOUT TH1S ON3!", said one of them.

"not unle22 ii'm there," said the second.

"I Believe I Would Also Like To View This," said the third, thoughtfully. The people vanished. One patron looked thoughtfully into his mug, and decided against having that one last pint for the road. Maybe he should take up religion instead, he though.

It made more sense than vanishing people, anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> Once the kids and trolls win and get their ultimate reward, they become gods of their new universe.
> 
> And gods have folllowers.
> 
> And well, when a god tells you about the time they played a super sweet prank on a rival god, and you tell it to your friend, and he tells it to his, it tends to get a little embellished a bit.
> 
> and soon a "bucket over a door" becomes a myth of the great trickster god of the wind pranking the god of blood into holding up the ocean for a year.
> 
> A quick little kiss and a bunch of roses in front of the followers becomes an insane love tale involving courting each other for 300 years, and only winning the other's heart after picking the rare flower from the depths of hell for a gift to win them over.
> 
> Basically, the gods hearing the myths and legends of their followers and trying to piece them back into some innocuous thing they saw them doing once or something like that


End file.
